Over £380K awarded to enhance Early Years provision for Service families
We’ve awarded funding worth over £380,000 to a further 12 fantastic projects supporting Service children in the latest round of the Early Years programme!
These projects are set to help enhance early childhood education and childcare to better support the unique needs and challenges of young children from Armed Forces families.
Dedicated resources for Service children across the UK
Part of the MOD’s Armed Forces Families Fund, the Early Years programme supports initiatives that help Armed Forces families access good quality early childhood education and childcare provision. This will enhance capacity, allowing more Service children to enrol, create improved learning environments, and offer suitable training for staff development to address the unique challenges faced by Service children.
Empowering lifelong learning through health and wellbeing
We awarded 37,908.00 to Dreghorn Pre-School to expand capacity, allowing more Service children to attend and benefit from improved learning environments. This funding will enable the pre-school to employ a dedicated breakfast club champion, responsible for running the club and ensuring all children have access to a well-balanced, nutritious breakfast, promoting better health and wellbeing outcomes for Service children.
Helen Mullen, Manager of Dreghorn preschool, said: “Dreghorn Pre-school and creche is located in the heart of the Service Families Accommodation within the Edinburgh Garrison. This funding will enable us to expand our provision by offering an early morning breakfast club for all.
The funding will allow us to create a nurturing dining area, where our youngest children have the opportunity to develop essential lifelong skills as they prepare, serve and eat in an unhurried and sociable way.
It will enable us to continue our journey to excellence ensuring all children using our service have the opportunity to grow into responsible and confident individuals”.
Creating new provisions
Naval Under Fives were awarded £10,000,00 to support the opening of a new facility that will offer places to military families on the waiting list, helping those who are delaying their return to work.
The organisation will offer more focused care by adjusting age groups to better meet the developmental needs of children. With several local nurseries closing, Service families moving into the area now face fewer options and may struggle to secure a place on waiting lists. The opening of a new setting will create additional places to Service families, with spaces available for both babies and toddlers.
A collaborative network promoting best practice
We supported a cluster of 11 settings, led by Portsmouth City Council with an award of £42,070.00 to develop a network of Armed Forces friendly settings within the city. This project will enable the sharing of best practices, address the needs of Service children, and enable families to access support in the local area, helping to mitigate the challenges of Service life.
Portsmouth City Council Leader and Armed Forces Champion, Cllr Steve Pitt, said: “The successful funding from the Armed Forces Covenant Trust will allow us to work with and train early years professionals to create a network of armed forces friendly childcare settings. It’s great news for our service families and will complement the existing work we do to support our wider armed forces community.”
Meeting the needs of Service families
The Trust has awarded projects that will significantly benefit Armed Forces families with children under 5 years by improving access to quality childcare. These projects aim to address existing support gaps, deliver sustainable change, and are developed in partnership with Armed Forces communities.
Carol Stone, Director of Grants at the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust said: “We are pleased to announce the return of opportunities for Early Years settings to enhance their offer for Service children. These grants will support settings to provide tailored resources and programmes that cater specifically to the particular needs of military families. We look forward in seeing the innovative ways in which each setting meets the programme outcomes”.